Lanterns on the Lake – Until the Colors Run

As a general rule, I skirt the edge of symphonic pop (rock, et al.) with a rug-toothed sneer that – despite its flagrancy – actually belies the true depths of contempt I feel towards those who would take the hallowed grounds of three-minute, 4/4 miracle work and shore it up the ass of pretentious dissent with the swollen strings of a baroque prig.

Mostly, I suppose, it’s because when I have to hear those bands (who’ll remain nameless because, come on, man…you know EXACTLY who the fuck I mean) they always come qualified as “literary.” And I think that’s insulting. Not just to me, but to the great pantheon of fuck-all brut brute cacophoners who wanted/needed nothing more than to create a way to reflect the rare wonder of being and on whom I (and so many better) have built a lifetime.

It infers (in apt dismissal) that my displeasure is vulgar, rudimentary. That my preference for GG and Selby over The Arcade Fire and Eggers speaks, somehow, to my capacity for artistic appreciation at the sodded playground of high-browed tomfuckery.

And that just makes me so mad I could spit this beer right back in its can and throw it out the backdoor window with that Ayn Rand piece of trash…but I won’t…because this Bud belongs to me and it’s motherfucking delicious.

So where does Lanterns on the Lake play into this? Well, they’ve got that informed potpourri of folk, strings, pop, electronic, eclectic politically underpinned humanistic lonesome tone poem sound going on that tends (clearly) to pluck my last civilian ire but unlike so many artists whose referential ability defiles the base effect of humane intent, their new record Until the Colors Run plays like a natural unfolding of heartlong pitfalls and sociopolitical determinations whose basic structure rests in the power of the rock (voice, bass, guitar, drums) but whose resonance is most apparent when its flushed out in a wall of sound which veers between the loud fragile exploitation of Explosions in the Sky (listen to the fleeting noodles of “The Buffalo Days”) when I could still hear that band without feeling like vacant roadkill and the piano power ballads of a modern pop chanteuse whose breath and space is an instrument unto itself.

And cinema, always the cinema.

Huh.

Come to think of it, I’m not really all that sure why I like Lanterns on the Lake so much more than Of Montreal or Okkervil River (I lied earlier) or the new Portland chamber pop revivalist scene but I do. Perhaps its because I was able to listen to this band, unencumbered and let them pour out into so many dusky winter days half sleeping on the train, yearning for the late comfort of a dog’s trotted imagination.

Where are my pups, anyway?

Until the Colors Run Tracklist:

1. Elodie
2. The Buffalo Days
3. The Ghost That Sleeps In Me
4. Until The Colours Run
5. Green & Gold
6. You Soon Learn
7. Picture Show
8. Another Tale From Another English Town
9. Our Cool Decay

Lanterns on the Lake - Until the Colors Run, reviewed by Charles on 2014-02-05T17:20:44+00:00 rating 3.8 out of 5